Korriban: The First Lessons
by Tobias Corvinus
Summary: The Empire's property doesn't get told where it's going or why. Just do your job and stay alive. Kory's trying her best, but this is Korriban. The sand comes from eroded monuments and corpse dust, ancient tombs hold fresh corpses, and the cold-shadowed Academy halls are as deadly as the Tuk'ata outside. The weak perish, the strong endure, but only the Sith will thrive here. Right?
1. Chapter 1

The viewport was a new experience. Kory tried to savor it, but glancing out the transparisteel only showed black, empty space. No clue as to where she was or where she was going and the pale girl reflected back at her didn't have an answer either.

The military shuttle had room for twenty, but they'd crammed twenty five slaves in. Most were human but Kory saw a few aliens as well as she sat in her seat next to a large boy with dark hair and broad shoulders. Some Twi'leks with twitching lekku, a corpse-pale Rattataki chewing on her nails, and in the farthest row, a slight figure wrapped up in a tattered hood flashed her a yellow eyed stare when she looked that way.

Kory looked back to the front and tried to ignore the pressure building in her bladder and the anxiety building in her gut.

Usually the rust-buckets they transported slaves in were converted bulk freighters with coffin-like interiors. This was the first time she'd been transported by a shuttle. It even had seats and the troopers hadn't even mag-cuffed the slaves to rails. Odd that was, especially because there were only four troopers, all stowed up at the front, watching the slaves with expressionless visors and fiberweave gloves wrapped around collar-remotes.

Kory fingered the collar around her own throat. Four years ago, the electric prods had felt claustrophobic. Now it was almost scary how she almost forgot she was wearing one. The scarier thing was you _wanted_ the guards to use the remotes because the alternative was the carbon scored blasters. One was painful, the other was fatal. The boy beside her saw Kory eying the troopers and shook his head. "Wouldn't try it girl." He had a soft voice for such a big frame and Kory snorted.

"I'm just wondering if they'd be nice enough to turn the life-support up a little."

The shuttle was loaded past occupancy and the air cyclers were whining overtime to take the exhaled waste of thirty-some aliens and humans and crank it back into something approaching air.

"Take small sips," the boy responded, "That's what I'm doing."

" _Shut it back there,"_ one of the troopers barked, static leaking out of his helmet vocoder.

They both went silent for a few minutes. Then the boy said quietly, "I'm Gerd."

They'd been glancing at each other out of their eye-corners the entire flight, but this was the first time they'd broken the silence. Slaves kept their mouths zipped during transport. Talking slaves made the guards nervous and nervous guards had those blasters and collar remotes. But the dark haired boy had something, one of those vibes Kory sometimes picked up, that made her feel relaxed. Made her want to trust him. "Kory," she replied even more quietly, "Do you know what's going on?"

Gerd shook his head. "Space me if I know. Two weeks ago I was cracking ore on Yidgda III, then some scary fellow in a robe showed up and the foremen were punting me to the port fast enough to burn carbon." Gerd paused then glanced at her softly, "How about you?"

"About the same." Kory whispered, "Except mine was three days ago. Pulled me off the factories at Brental."

"Brental? Is that where…" Gerd let his question dangle and touched his cheek.

Kory tucked her chin away, dipping the burn scar under her right eye back into the shadows. "I was lucky. I was at the back of the line. The ones up front were insta-baked when the smelters started leaking."

"I like it," Gerd said after a moment of silence, "Draws attention to your pretty blue eyes."

Kory gave him a crooked grin, "You're cute. Spend all the flight thinking that one up?"

Gerd shook his head, "Mining gives you plenty of time with nothing but thinking. I've been polishing that gem for months now." He smiled with his eyes. Solid, warm, brown ones, "Just now had the courage to say it, that's all"

Kory's crooked grin straightened, she looked back to the viewport, this time hiding the color in her cheeks. "Nice to know where we're going though, yeah?"

"Korriban."

Kory and Gerd both craned their necks.

The boy in the seat behind them shrank down like a mouse, "I-I mean, that's just what I overheard." He stared down and clasped his hands together into nervous knots.

"I heard it too." His seat-mate, a stocky Zabrak with an angry look in his orange eyes, growled "Guard was blathering all about it. How we're going to be saber-bait for the Sith."

Kory's hand tightened on the armrest **.** Everyone in the Empire heard stories about the Sith. From what she understood, the military served the Sith just as the slaves served the foremen and Moffs and industrial corporations. Completely at their masters' whims. You heard strange stories about the Sith, everything from their red laser swords to strange powers. Some whispered it was some sort of universal energy called the Force, others called it black magic. One thing all the stories agreed on was their cruelty, their capricious nature, their ability to do anything and everything to someone who failed them.

Kory had seen one once. The stories didn't exaggerate. And now she was part of the slave shipment headed to their homeworld. _Dad was right_ , she realized, _we were born under a bad-luck star._

"You don't know that,"Gerd was still arguing with the Zabrak and losing badly. "Probably just need more laborers."

"Yeah?" The Zabrak growled, "Think they need your friend's skinny asteroid on a plasma-drill? Think the skrunt here's going to be hauling many rocks before his twiggy back breaks?"

"My name's Alif."

"Shut it, skrunt." the Zabrak leaned forward, _"_ See _friend_ we're on a one-way trip, all tickets paid, express ride because those Sith down there want us nice and breathing when they start practicing their magics on us."

"Magic?" Gerd snorted, "You're going to be telling me about the space-wizards of Uvultha next."

The Zabrak snarled and lunged forward, grabbing Kory's headrest and thrusting his head between them. "I saw one of them lift my uncle up and kill him with his own horns. He just stared and _pop-pop-pop_." The Zabrak tapped down on his own horns, "drove them right through his skull. So what the _kriff_ you call that if it isn't-"

His rant got interrupted as his collar sparked with blue tendrils. The Zabrak snarled and jerked back into his seat. One of the troopers stalked forward, one hand on the remote, the other hip-aiming a mean looking scatter-gun down the row.

" _I said shut it."_ The trooper's distorted voice came out as an electric snarl, _"Any other scum feeling a little deaf?"_

Kory carefully kept her stare down, feeling the trooper's hidden eyes pan across the seated slaves. She'd been shocked before. They didn't nickname the collars "tongue-cleavers" for nothing. After a final, lingering moment, the trooper turned around and stalked back up the aisle.

"Kriffing scum sucker" the Zabrak muttered quietly. His voice was raw and cracked, but Zabrak were tough aliens to slap around. "See _him_ in a collar one day."

"Look!" Gerd hissed suddenly. Kory jerked her gaze to the transparisteel viewport and her jaw dropped.

A long white shape filled in the empty space outside, the triangle form of an Imperial dreadnought. Bristling with turbolasers, large as an orbital platform. She saw more in the distance, orbiting a rust-brown planet that barely shimmered with the blur of an atmosphere.

Gerd whistled, "Just _one_ of those can obliterate a city in seconds."

A pair of Sith fighters with forward-swept wings hissed down from their right and dropped behind the shuttle. They trailed the shuttle as it entered the planet's orbit, ready to escort it or blow it out of the sky. The shuttle stayed on its course as it chased the twilight down and across the planet, breaking into the waning hours of the daylight zone.

Outside the transparisteel, the blackness of space began to crispen and orange. Fire leapt off the outer hull and the shuttle creaked and groaned. Kory looked out the transparisteel get her first view of the planet below.

At first all she saw was empty wasteland, an orange sere of dust and rock, then a black smudge in the distance. Fifteen seconds and twenty kilometers later, durasteel gray began to enter the picture in the form of toy-sized gun batteries and tiny blurs that the shuttle's slipstream tore by too fast to see.

Then Kory realized those toy-sized guns on the ground were turbolaser batteries with cannons massive enough to punch holes through cruiser plating. And the canyon mouth the shuttle was flying towards was still getting _bigger_.

The feeling of smallness increased as the scale of what they were flying into hit her. The sunlight cut off as the shuttle flashed into the canyon's mouth. Running lights snapped on, illuminating massive faces carved into the sandstone bluffs. Kory pressed her nose to the transparisteel and saw lights below.

"What are those?" Kory asked. Gerd shrugged with a _scan-me_ gesture. Alif was the one who answered her.

"Excavations," he whispered quietly, "Supposedly there's hundreds of ruins in this valley and the Sith want them all dug up."

Gerd grunted "Told you, laborers."

"Saber-bait." the Zabrak insisted.

Gerd sighed, "What do you think Kory?"

"I think I have a bad feeling about this."

The Zabrak snorted. "We're slaves on a shuttle about to set down on the birthplace of some of the most sadistic murglaks the galaxy's ever spaced out. _Everyone's_ got a bad feeling."

Kory didn't answer him, but that wasn't the feeling she meant. Her throat felt tight and her insides chilled, like someone had force-fed ice down her throat. Something about the valley walls flashing past them and the squat pyramidal structure capping off the end of it, was making her feel like claws were scritching at her on the other side of that transparisteel window.

Her father had told her to trust her gut. Insisted on it almost religiously, but he'd never said why. Right now, Kory felt that planet racing her was an open grave, dug up. Excavated. Waiting for fresh corpses. Waiting for _her_.

All too soon the shuttle's landing thrusters were vibrating, bringing them down to a landing. The troopers started barking orders and the slaves stumbled out of their seats. Someone activated the ramp and harsh light spilled in. Kory followed Gerd's massive back as they joined the flow and then she was outside. An avenue of colossal statues stooped their backs under the blistering red sunlight. Dust and grit swirled up from the shuttle's retros thrust at Kory's eyes. More troopers, these in sand-scratched red armor barked more orders and waved more blasters, ushering the slaves up a ramp to the massive pyramid-topped structure at the end of the valley.

Looking at it sent a shiver up Kory's spine. Everything about it, from the cold gleam of durasteel to the wide, gaping mouth of an entry-way struck her as wrong. Dangerous. For a moment, Kory just stood still, letting the other slaves stumble and flow around her.

Then someone jostled her shoulder and Kory suddenly felt something. Like a flash of carbonite, or a freezing, electric shock. Something cold. Powerful. The hooded alien who'd brushed her shoulder, the one Kory had glanced in the corner of the shuttle, the one with the flash of animal eyes, turned around.

Kory sucked in a sharp breath. Surprise laced with fear cracked up her spine, because under that hood wasn't a Twi'lek or a Zabrak, it was a red skinned, yellow eyed alien female with a narrow face pinched sharp with bony spurs around her eye-sockets.

 _A Sith Pureblood._ _Space. Me._ The stories about the regular Sith were bad enough. The red skins...those were stories you didn't want to hear _twice._

And around her neck...

Kory only had a second to gape before the Pureblood girl glared. Her eyes were pure venom. Poison yellow, simmering with danger. Kory snapped her gaze to the ground. She didn't dare to breath. When she finally did look up, the Pureblood was gone, vanished into the line of slaves and Kory stood still. Part of her refused to process what she'd seen. Part of her knew exactly what she'd seen. The shiny durasteel of a slave collar just like Kory's, wrapped around the neck of a Pureblood Sith as red as the one she'd seen once, a very long time ago.

 _But a Pureblood slave? How?_

Someone nudged her arm and Kory almost jumped. Gerd looked down at her, concerned. Kory shook her head at his silent question and the question became a warning jerk of his head. They were drawing stares from the red-armored troopers. Kory heard the whine of a shock-baton starting to power up and she quickly grabbed Gerd's hand and tugged him along.

Together they followed the rest of the slaves into the gaping mouth of the pyramidal structure. The sunlight outside sliced away, replaced by pale white lighting.

Kory had been in a lot of slave-pens. This was nothing like she'd imagined. The entire place was a hybrid of modern and ancient. The walls were cold-stamped durasteel, the floor was weathered sandstone tiles, scrubbed smooth by countless generations of feet. Statues of hooded figures loomed over the slaves like brooding giants and blood red banners stamped with the six-spoked wheel of the Empire draped from the gaping archways and hovered on the walls.

She caught glimpses of young men and women in black tunics or robes. Every one of them stopped and stared at the slaves passing by. Every one of them had glinting, hooded eyes that put Kory in mind of Firaxa sharks. The entire place felt cold. Not like the life-support was cranked low, more subtle. A chill that seeped into Kory's bones and didn't leave even as she rubbed her arms.

 _What is this place?_

They were led down a side corridor, through cold durasteel archways lit barely with light panels, into some sort of audience hall made out of dusty stone. They weren't the only slaves either. Kory saw a massive Houk with gladiator scars carved on its warty chest and a one-eyed abyssin blinking in the corner. Some feline Cathar bared their fangs at any of the other slaves that got too close and a trio of twi'leks with scarred lekku watched everything with impassive silence.

Usually you could tell what the work was going to be. Picked with skinny ones like Alif - it was going to be because your hands were small and dexterous. Settled in amid a bunch of young female twi'leks? Every orifice was going to be hurting the morning after. Thrown in with Zabraks and big lads like Gerd? It was going to be strained back muscles and fatigued sleeping in the rock quarries.

But this, this was too random. Dozens of species, dozens of body types, a cross-section of the various slaves of the Empire, maybe a hundred total.

 _But for what?_ Looking around, Kory noticed it didn't seem like any of the other slaves had a clue either.

Then the doors opened and a trio of figures walked in. Two were human, one was a red-skinned Sith. The quiet whispers died to silence as one of the humans stepped up to the dias. Kory had never seen an angrier man.

His skin was corpse-pale, his hair and chin-beard were the color of shaded blood, a tattoo slashed across his right eye like a swollen scar and his lips were thin, blood-clenched lines. Laminated armor with durasteel ribs covered him from head to toe and a long metal cylinder dangled from his belt.

A laser-sword. No, that wasn't right. _Lightsaber_.

Kory's throat tightened. Her gut started to sink, even before he started to speak.

"I am Overseer Harkun." The man's voice was a kath hound growl, just one octave above a foaming snarl. "And you...all of you...are scum."

His voice commanded obedience, it demanded silence. Not one slave breathed a word. They'd heard this spiel before from countless foremen and other overseers. _Scum, useless, lazy._ It was expected, along with _work faster, reduced rations,_ and _I'll give you some encouragement._

This wasn't a bored recital. This was passionate. With hate. Harkun glared out at the crowd,

"You stand on three thousand years of _power_. Countless generations of Sith have sharpened their skills with the Force and honed their connection to the Dark Side _here_. By tradition, you should be on your knees. By precedent, in chains. Instead..."

His mouth twisted and his next words came out like swallowed bile. "You are here in defiance of tradition, to be trained as Sith. Because you are all Force sensitives."

Kory felt stunned. She looked at Gerd and Gerd stared back with wide eyes. The audience chamber erupted into sharp hisses and quick whispers that died as soon as the Overseer started talking.

" _Certain_ Lords of the Sith believe any of you scum can learn the power of the Dark Side. This is the _only_ reason you have been granted a chance to rise out of your puddled slime-pits." Harkun's eyes narrowed and his finger jabbed out, "You. Slave. Step forward."

A human slave stumbled forward, eyes carefully lowered, head tilted to the ground. Harkun's lips curled up tight in disgust. "These Lords believe you can learn to channel the Dark Side into power." Harkun said, still pointing at the slave.

"Power such as _this_."

A blue stream of electricity crackled from his fingertip and struck the slave in the chest. The slave collapsed, his screams bounced off the walls and Kory sucked in a startled breath. It wasn't a trick, it wasn't a stunner, the lightning was leaping out of his _finger_.

T _he Sith. The power of the Force. The stories were true._

"As you can see, this is a ludicrous concept. An insulting one." Harkun raised his voice over the slave and the crackling lightning and kept talking. "At this academy, the weak perish, the strong endure, but only the Sith will thrive. And _none_ of you are Sith. You are Slaves. You do not have the mindset to be Sith, the strength of will to bend the galaxy to _you_."

The slave was still screaming. Words choked and foamed, gashed out between spasming teeth. _Please. Please. Please._ Kory's stomach sickened, but she didn't dare look away from Harkun's words.

"If, by some luck, you survive the basic training , you will then be competing in Trials for the attention of Darths and Lords. Sith more powerful than you can ever imagine. You will be competing against the cream of the Sith, acolytes with lineages of blood and power stretching back for centuries, for the privilege of being selected to be an apprentice."

The lightning stopped. Smoke rose off the twitching slave. His flesh was striped with red and black burns and his chest trembled like a rabbit, hands barely twitching, mouth sipping in desperate breaths of air. _Please...please...please_ wheezed out.

"For those of you who still doubt me, who think because you are Force sensitive you are now too _valuable_ to kill, who perhaps _believe_ I am merely trying to frighten you into submission...well..." Harkun smiled, "Let me rectify that."

"No." Kory whispered. Gerd squeezed her arm in warning, his face pale. The rest of Harkun's fingers rose up to flank his index finger.

Kory didn't want to remember what happened next. Not the fat ropes of plasma-blue lightning, or the hissing pop of flesh cooked from the inside exploding out or the smell of burnt meat that made her mouth salivate and her stomach roll.

But Kory could never forget the way Harkun lifted his hand, and a blackened, withered husk that two minutes ago had been a young, healthy slave rose up from the ground and levitated in the air. Harkun clenched his fist and the withered husk crackled, snapped, and collapsed into black ash and gray fragments of bone.

The smile was still on Harkun's face. It actually _widened._

"Welcome to the Academy, _slave_ -acolytes."


	2. Chapter 2

The mess hall was already getting busy. The dinner hour had just begun. Falling into line behind some other acolytes, Kory collected a tray of food and went looking for a table. By habit, she looked for the farthest, darkest one, but someone had already claimed it. The Sith Pureblood raised her head and gave the approaching human a hooded yellow stare.

Kory swallowed and settled down at a different table instead. She didn't need her gut feelings to scan _that_ message. Of course it wasn't actually her gut, was it? Had her father known she was Force-sensitive? Had he had it too or did her mother give it to her?

Kory stared at the bowl of roasted nerf broth. The overseer's revelation had left her with a million questions she'd never get answers for. Not anymore.

"Hey."

Kory looked up and some of that gloom turned into a surprised smile. "Hey." She scooted to the side and Gerd sat his muscled bulk down next to her.

Alif approached next, skirting around the edge of the hall like a mouse-droid trying to steer clear of stomping feet. He hovered over the third seat, flicking them both cautious glances. Kory gave him a reassuring smile, Gerd raised a brow, and the smaller boy slid in like a smuggler skulking into port.

A fourth tray slapped down. The zabrak glared at each of them before he sat down and ripped into a grain roll. Kory'd learned his name was Nical. She already knew he had a temper. Surprising that he'd joined them. Then again, maybe he didn't have anyone else either.

Gerd reached up and rubbed the pale strip of flesh on his neck with a spade-sized hand. Kory gave him a sympathetic look, "Feels strange having air up there again, yeah?"

"Yeah." he nodded slowly, "Stranger thinking it's Sith that'd get this off."

After Harkun's welcome-speech the slaves had been herded up and sent through medical tests in a cold sterile room that looked more like a torture chamber than an infirmary. That was also where their collars had been removed and they'd been given new uniforms to replace the old slave rags. Black tunics, black leggings, black boots.

They'd been shown to their quarters and assigned to their acolyte groups for the basic training and then the slaves had been just...turned loose. No sentries in the hall to ask what the kriff they were doing outside their pens, no curfews when they turned probe-droids loose with stunners and sonics.

The strangest thing to adjust to was the saber-foil clipped to her back. It wasn't a military grade vibroblade, but it was still a weapon. Just carrying it was violating four years of enforced taboo and the fear of some trooper spotting her and executing her on the spot was a hard one to bury. Kory moved the stew around with her spoon and nibbled on a bread roll.

Gerd nudged her shoulder. "What's wrong?"

Kory tried to smile, "Guess I'm not hungry." The smile wasn't working so she let it drop. Gerd's concerned look melted her resistance and she shrugged helplessly. "I've seen slaves killed before. Not like that," Kory shook her head. "Right now, I can't stand the smell of cooked meat."

Kory pushed her bowl back. Nical grabbed for it but Gerd's hand latched around his wrist. The bigger human stared down the Zabrak's angry expression and pushed the bowl back in Kory's direction. "You need to eat."

Kory grimaced and spooned some of the stew. Blasted shame. It _was_ good, but right now all she could think about was that boy's expression as he was cooked from the inside out.

Nical rubbed his wrist and glared at Gerd. "Don't be nerf-headed. That overseer was just making an example so the rest of us toe the line. They _need_ us. That's the whole reason they brought us here, remember? To train us as Sith. "

Kory nodded and tried to put her feeling into words. It wasn't just the stew or what she'd seen was a feeling that'd started creeping up as soon as her foot touched the surface of this planet. An uneasy feeling, a quiet dread that'd been crawling into her bones.

 _Maybe I don't want to be a Sith._

Kory'd meant to keep that thought inside. She hadn't realized she'd spoken it until she heard Alif make a strangled choke. Kory's eyes jerked up and the color rushed to her cheeks.

Alif quickly ducked his head. Gerd gave her a startled look. Nical just snorted and mimed a droid getting their power cut, universal symbol for someone who'd short-circuited their brain.

Kory frowned hotly, "I'm just saying I'm not looking forward to killing people. Especially other slaves." She glared at her meal, "Excuse me for being cross-wired."

"Maybe we don't have to." Gerd said quietly.

Kory frowned, "What do you mean?"

Gerd looked at his hands. "I mean, it's like having a blaster right? I can pull the trigger or I can leave it in the holster, but just because I have one doesn't mean I'm going to start vaping every organic I see."

"Like they'd ever give us blasters" Kory said.

"Yeah, bad example." Gerd rubbed the back of his neck. "Look, we're all Force sensitives right? Doesn't it make more sense to learn how to _use_ it then leave it alone? Just because we learn how to doesn't mean we'll actually use it like that."

"We're slaves. This is our job, isn't it? What else are we going to do?" Alif asked quietly, "Run away? Outside the Academy's nothing but wasteland and predators. Even if there's a spaceport, none of us know how to fly and even if we did, there's all those warships and fighters." The small boy shook his head "Wouldn't get a single parsec before we were space-dust."

Nical slammed his cup down. Water splashed violently across the table. Alif ducked down and Kory flinched back.

"You're all worse than Neimoidians. I don't _want_ to. I don't _have_ to. I don't have any other _choice_." Nical glared at them and then dropped the nasally tone out of his voice.

"Well I _want_ to learn _._ " His eyes were feral, angry orange. "If I could shoot lightning, I wouldn't be here. Soon as I can? I _won't_ be here." Nical bared his teeth. "But in the meantime, if they want to teach me how to use the Dark Side, I'll be more than happy to do whatever it takes."

"Even killing other people? Slaves like us?" Kory asked. "You're okay with frying Gerd here? Or Alif, or me?"

"In half a heartbeat." Nical looked at her expression and laughed. It was cold and jagged. "Sithspit, Brental must've been _cushy_. Where've you been during this galaxy? Didn't you hear that overseer?"

"Nical." Gerd said softly.

Nical ignored him and glared at Kory. "Only the ones who are willing to do whatever it takes are going to make it. Everyone else is going to be eating dirt. At least the skunt here's smart enough to keep his head down, and rock-head's got that muscle. You're not going to make it a week before someone cracks your skinny asteroid."

Kory jumped up but Gerd put a hand on her arm and pushed her back down. The bench creaked as he leaned forward. "Hey Nical? Did you know Cortosis ore is tougher than bone?"

The Zabrak snapped his horned head around, "Yeah that's fascinating poodoo, rock-head. What's your point?"

Gerd slowly got up. It was like watching a time lapse of a mountain forming. He put his spade-sized hands on the table and leaned forward. "Nothing. Just pointing out that I've been breaking something harder than your skull eighteen hours a day, every day, for six years. Maybe think about that before you start threatening people."

Gerd stared at Nical. Nical glared at Gerd. Kory and Alif looked between them and started eyeing escape vectors.

When the fight happened, it was nasty and brutal. A contest of massive strength versus speed and ferocity. Acolytes whispered about it in the hallways. More than one new-blood, Kory included, had spine shudders about it for weeks afterwards.

But Gerd and Nical weren't involved in it.

* * *

The Sith Pureblood forked the nerf patty and sliced away with the knife. She popped the meat into her mouth and chewed. She felt the the three minds coming towards her like warning tones sounding missile locks. She didn't move her eyes, but she watched in her peripherals.

Three Twi'leks, all slaves, and with enough facial similarity to be from the same clan, if not the same family. Nothing she hadn't dealt with before.

Tali kept eating as they came to a stop in a tight triangle a couple of meters away.

" _Are you lost, Pure?"_ The male in the back of the triangle grinned grinned, showing needle teeth.

" _She's not lost, she's a slave like us."_ The female in the back had a voice that could poison honey and a nasty trio of scars across her face.

" _Poodoo. Who's ever heard of a Pureblood slave?"_

The Pureblood had seen their type before. Pack predators. The two in the back were followers, the one in the front was the leader. A big worm-head with a scarred fighting face. His nose was a clawed lump of cartilage, and his hands, like Tali's, had thick black shards closer to talons than nails.

This Twi'lek could be a problem, especially if he got those hands around her neck.

He spoke like he was crushing gravel with his bull-necked throat. _"Now, now. No reason not to be friendly, after all, we're all slaves here."_ The scarred Twi'lek flexed massive shoulders in a liquid shrug. _"Your Empire enslaved us. Why they enslave you?"_

The fork stabbed the patty, the knife sliced through. Tali popped another strip into her mouth and ignored him. Her lessons had started at puberty, when the fire-ant stings under her scalp began ridging up into bone-spurs thick enough to notice.

They were the kind of lessons that could only be taught playing _Odd Nerf Out_ in the cold dark of a spice-mine, where half the workforce were hijacked Imperial slaves and the other half were culled from Republic border worlds.

They weren't the kinds of lessons these Twi'leks could've known because the bigger Twi'lek ignored her aura of _Don't mess with me_ and took a step closer. Her eyes glanced at his left hand and noted something flat palmed in his knuckled grip.

" _Maybe she failed her master."_

" _Must have been a big poodoo failure."_

Tali didn't answer them. The Twi'leks were a bunch of jackukats sniffing around the campfire. They had to test the waters, build up their courage with a hundred little feints before they committed to a strike. The triangle broke up. The female draped herself into an empty chair, the smaller male stepped to the right and scootched his butt up onto a table. The bigger male stepped forward, claiming the prestige of the spotlight.

" _Maybe she's an orphan."_ He grinned, flashing those needle teeth, " _Family dead, no one to hide behind."_

" _Or maybe they kicked her out themselves."_

The lead Twi'lek took another step forward, now he was almost directly behind her. She could smell his breath on her shoulder. It had an open-grave reek. _"You have lovely skin. Lovely red. Just like my sister. They called her Yum-Yum because of her lovely red."_

He crouched down to put his mouth next to her ear. Carrion meat joined the grave reek. One lekku draped around her shoulder like a Hutt's bloated tail. _"I ever tell you what happened to my sister, Yum-Yum?"_ The Twi'lek's mind was overflowing with violent images of what he was going to do to her.

Tali's throat was starting to get parched but she cut another strip and ignored the water. His jaws parted like a Firaxa about to snap down.

" _It wasn't very nice, what they did, Wasn't very nice what I did to them either."_ His lekku twitched faster, _"So maybe I not tell you, Lovely Red, maybe I just show-"_

Sudden jerks caught attention and fired up reflexes. Tali pulled the fork out of her mouth and smoothly sank it into his lekku like she'd mistaken it for a slab of nerf.

The Twi'lek roared as three tines of twelve-centimeter steel nailed his lekku to the table. His left hand flashed out. Tali scooped her head under the dinner knife he'd palmed and twisted the fork. His snarl cracked several octaves higher and his head jerked up but Tali's hand was already cupping the back of his skull. She threw her weight down and introduced his face to the table's nylasteel surface.

She didn't stop until mucus-stained blood and toothy shards spat across the dented table. Tali stepped back. The scarred Twi'lek slid off groaning, and drunkenly swiping and she followed him down. One knee dug into his back, an empty hand hauled his other lekku back and his head sprang up for her knife to tickle the pale green flesh of his neck.

By this point the other Twi'leks had gotten over their dead-lock disbelief enough to start forward with angry shouts and murder in their eyes. The Pureblood flashed her feral yellow eyes at them and pressed the meat knife against the scarred Twi'lek's pulsing artery. They got the message and froze in their tracks.

Satisfied they weren't going to interfere, Tali focused on the massive Twi'lek underneath her.

She brought her mouth close and slowly hissed into his ear in broken Twi'leki, _"You remind me of another worm-head. Couldn't take hint. Want me show you what happen to him?"_ Her voice was a vibroknife purr _"Or you take hint?"_

The Twi'lek stayed silent. The Pureblood bounced his head against the ground and he snarled _"Alright, alright! I take hint! Hint!"_ Between his shattered nose and his missing teeth it came out like _hynth, hynth._

" _Alright."_ Tali said _"Hint."_

She jerked his lekku towards her mouth and bit down.

At first the Twi'lek bucked and screamed but Tali pricked his skin with the knife, threatening to turn a scratch into a high-pressure spray so that just left him the screaming as she gnawed through the two inches of lekku in her mouth. It was tough and rubbery, but her jaws had plenty of practice with fingers and ears and sensory horns.

When she was done, he was reduced to a curled mess. Whimpering wasn't the right word. What was coming out of his shattered mouth was a sort of high-pitched, soft-voiced keening. The kind of noise an animal made when it was overloaded with pain.

Tali swallowed the lump in her mouth and swiped her sleeve across her bloody lips. She straightened her chair, sat back into it and after a moment's recollection, ripped the fork out of the Twi'lek's other lekku. Tali flicked some yellowish tail fat off her fork and returned to her nerf patty.

One of the Twi'leks sounded like they were about to be sick. Tali didn't look up as they scraped their friend off the floor. Their footsteps faded. Only then did the Pureblood put the fork down, pick the glass up and flush the slimy taste of tail-fat and copper blood down her throat.

* * *

 _Night._

The dorm room was a featureless alloy-plated box. The floor was the same oddly ancient stone tiling Kory had seen throughout the rest of the academy. The walls were bare durasteel. A pair of ceiling lumens cast harsh shadows more than bright light into the box.

The only other illumination came from the door panel and the faint red glow of the heat vents set into the bottom of one of the walls. They looked shiny. New. Like the lights they seemed incapable of actually dispelling the cold gloom.

Kory was starting to suspect nothing would. It didn't seem to be an actually physical cold, it felt like something that bypassed barriers of flesh and fat and blood and went straight to the bones, burrowing in like a parasite or cancer. She wondered if it was the Dark Side she was feeling and fought back a shudder.

There was an equipment rack beside the door. Kory fumbled with her saber-foil before she figured out the mag-locking system and slotted it into its rack. Then She took off her boots and set them inside one of the two matching footlockers set in front of the stainless steel bunk bed. The other footlocker was untouched. It'd been empty earlier too when an officious 2V droid had shown her to her quarters before dinner. At this point, Kory figured she was either the odd slave out...or her assigned roommate had already been killed off.

 _Just one more cheery thought to keep me up tonight._

Kory turned off the lights. Deep black darkness instantly filled the room, lit only by the infernal red glow of the heat vents. The darkness pressed down on her like a choking sensation and a hundred phantom claws prickled against her neck. Kory whirled back and lunged for the lights.

 _Click._

The harsh white snapped back on, raking the room into gaunt shadows. Her heart was racing. Kory rested her forehead against the cool wall and cursed.

"This is stupid" she said quietly, "I'm too old to be afraid of the dark."

No one agreed with her lie. She was all alone. Maybe that was part of the problem right there. The factories on Brental had always worked around the chrono. The hammering of the industrial presses, the motor-whirrs of the fabricators, the creaking of the conveyor belts. Noise and motion had permeated everything. Even the feeling of other bodies jammed in next to her, or the odors of a hundred different species filling her nose. It'd been miserable and frantic but also unmistakably active. Alive.

The room felt too silent without them. Unnaturally silent. Like a hidden predator holding its breath. And she was alone in this silent, waiting room.

Kory gritted her teeth.

She tried to sleep with the lights on, but the harsh surgical white seemed to stab into her no matter what she flattened against her face. And as soon as she stopped rustling, the hidden buzzing of the power energizing the lights grew louder and louder until it competed with her own heartbeat.

Kory threw off the sleeps in helpless frustration. She was just about ready to try dragging one of the mattresses into the corner and sleeping with her saber-foil when something knocked against her door.

She found Gerd waiting on the other side. He took in her bare feet and rumpled hair and his expression quickly turned apologetic.

"Sorry, I didn't know you were sleeping." He started to turn away.

"No, no" She blurted, "It wasn't working anyway. Come in."

Gerd hesitated. The dim corridor lighting cast shadows across his chiseled planes. "I don't want to intrude."

"You're not," she insisted, "Trust me, right now I could use the company."

Kory stepped back and Gerd stepped through, bowing his head under the doorframe and the hatch slid shut.

Gerd looked around and frowned "You have this room all to yourself?" He sounded more sympathetic than envious.

Kory nodded and put her saber-foil back in its rack, "I don't suppose you're my new roommate." Her tone was a little too hopeful to pass off as a joke. Her despair was a little too pathetic when he shook his head.

"Sorry, I'm bunked with Nical."

"Lucky."

"Oh yeah, he's been a real catch." Gerd looked around "You're really all alone in here?"

"For now." Kory looked around the stainless steel box and grimaced, "But I can't shake the notion that I'm going to wake up and find that Pureblood looming over me."

"I doubt your luck's that bad." Gerd shuddered, "I think even Nical's feeling a little meek knowing there's someone more feral than him walking around."

"Sure. What's a Zabrak with anger issues next to a Sith that actually _eats_ people."

"Lunch?" Gerd winced, "Sorry, bad joke, I know."

The conversation faltered. Kory looked for something else to fill it with. She didn't want Gerd leaving. It was selfish and childish but the presence of another person instantly crippled the gloom. If she held her breath someone else's exhale filled the gap. And Gerd took up so much space that if Kory turned her back there was no way some ancient dead horror could materialize in the gap in between.

"So...I'm guessing you can't sleep either." Gerd seemed to be able to read her thoughts and she nodded, grateful for the opening."

"Apparently my idea of a lullaby is ten different bodies farting and snoring and scratching themselves around me."

Gerd snorted, "You should try being a mining slave."

"Oh yeah?" Kory crossed her arms and leaned against the bunk. "You're saying it was worse on Yeden II?"

" _Ygdis III_ and yes, definitely," Gerd nodded, "Sure we only slept four to a pen, but this was four big, brawny, miners, and one of the ones we had was a Gamorrean."

Kory's brows raised. "You're joking." The porcine aliens were more commonly found with Hutts. Most Imperials didn't like using walking pigs who could turn around and smash an obnoxious overseer to pulp if their tiny brains were pushed far enough.

Gerd shook his head seriously and her jaw dropped, "But - didn't the Gamorrean cause any trouble?"

"Oh he wasn't too bad" Gerd sighed, "The only problem was that the proti-slop they fed us gave him gas. _Major_ gas."

Kory covered her mouth "Oh no."

"One day the Gamorrean had an extra serving of slop. That night...well," Gerd shook his head sadly, "I was the only one who managed to get my hands on an oxy-breather from the equipment stores. Everyone else died in their sleep."

Kory's lips started to tremble. She bit them and said carefully "That must have been terrible."

Gerd shrugged, "Oh I got off better than the Gamorrean. Last I heard, the Imp scientists had him locked away on a steady diet of proti-slop, trying to create a new chemical weapon."

Kory couldn't stop laughing. Shoulders shaking, head down, she wiped the tears from her eyes. "Did you really spoon a Gamorrean?"

"All I'm going to say is if it walks like one, smells like one and scratches like one-" A pillow slammed into Gerd's chest and he surrendered with an easy grin. "Well he _smelled_ like one."

He took the pillow and handed it back to her. Kory held it and studied the textures her fingers were knotting into it. "Hey...Thanks."

Gerd didn't raise his brows and say _For what_ or _It's just a pillow_. He rubbed his square chin and shrugged, "It's no trouble. I just wanted to check in. See how you were doing."

"Make sure I wasn't being murdered by my roommate?"

"Not exactly. I mean _yeah_ , I'd definitely be cracking skulls if I saw that, but...well, what you said at the table…" For some reason Gerd blushed and looked away, "Don't take this the wrong way but I don't think anyone else needs to be hearing that. I know where you're coming from but the acolytes,the teachers, blast even some of the other slaves-"

Kory held up her hand, holding off the rest of it. His concern touched her. The fact that he was so worried touched her more.

"I scan you loud and clear." She smiled, "It was a just knee jerk reaction, yeah? I've seen scum like Harkun, I don't ever want to be something like that, but, like you said, they can teach me whatever they want, but I don't have to use it. Thanks for pulling my head out of my asteroid."

Gerd nodded, "I'm glad to hear that." He stepped forward and dared a smile, "Besides, It's impossible for you to be Harkun. You're too nice. Too pretty too."

Kory's mouth crooked up "You know your gems are pretty terrible ."

"Well" Gerd shrugged easily, "I only found this gem this morning." Carefully, his fingers reached out and touched her cheek. Kory's breath quickened as he gently scooped the hair away from her ear. "I haven't had a chance to polish it yet."

He watched her, looked for how she'd react. She nodded slowly and felt her heart hammering in her chest. "Okay…" she whispered, "That was pretty good."

Kory felt his pleasure light up, a spark of pure joy that cut back the dark atmosphere that'd been hovering in this room since before she got here. She also felt the heat of his hand against her cheek. It made her heart quicken and sent all sorts of interesting sensations racing down her body. She looked up slowly into his eyes. "Hey, you know on that shuttle?"

"Yeah?" Gerd's thumb gently stroked the texture of her skin. He really didn't seem to mind the bumpy scar he found. Kory swallowed and didn't finish. She kissed him instead.

In a word? It was good. It was _very_ good.

Especially when his other hand came up and cupped her shoulder and his mouth pressed against her with a hunger that spiked Kory's heartbeat into the red. A little moan eased out of her mouth as they both came up for air and she finished her sentenced.

"You really _were_ cute."

Gerd's face lit up with a brilliant smile and that zinged something in Kory's mind. She stepped back and Gerd turned away to try to stifle his giddy grin with something more appropriate to a boy of his size. He coughed and cleared his throat, "Well since we're being honest, I wasn't lying either when I said - "

Gerd looked back and froze. "Oh. Blast."

Kory held her balled up tunic and shivered as the cold air hardened her buds. Her arms stayed tight across her chest. Then she slowly lowered them.

"You uh want to…"

She gestured and Gerd's eyes got even wider and he started to splutter "Y-yeah! It's just, usually..." and the cold air cut deeper as Kory froze.

"I mean, I don't _usually_ -"

"Me neither."

Someone swallowed. Maybe they both did, frozen in that moment.

Then Kory hit the door lock and Gerd started hopping like a one-legged astromech droid as he wrestled with his boots. Kory's leggings puddled to the floor, Gerd's tunic followed in short order.

Something _clicked_ and the darkness rushed back in but this time she didn't give a damn because his hands were cupping her goosebumped flesh, scooping her up and carrying her to the bunk. She landed gently and shivered at the cold air on her naked legs. Gerd's massive frame bent over her, close enough she could feel the heat from his skin like bathing in sunlight and the shivers changed to something else entirely.

"It's just usually, takes me longer to catch the _hint_ " he whispered in her ear, "blast...you're beautiful."

Kory laughed, delighted and startled, nervous and excited as Gerd lowered down on top of her. Their mouths joined together. Their bodies joined together. The darkness watched and brooded silently, unable to touch either one of them in this moment.

For a time, everything was warm.

* * *

The door was locked when she arrived, but the Sith Pureblood put her hand against the panel. There'd been a reprimand for the mess hall incident. The Overseer, the one with the red hair and whispy beard had snarled like a bulldog for almost an hour, but she got the feeling he was mostly angry at the _gutter-trash_ tactics she'd used, or how public it'd been.

Weathering his barrage had delayed her from settling in and the probe droids were already sweeping the shadowed halls. None of them spotted her of course, but she needed rest.

The bio-scanners in the panel read her palm and unlocked the door. Tali stepped through and wrinkled her nose at the stink. The bottom bunk was creaking so she turned on the lights.

For a moment, she lost control and her eyes widened at the sight before her.

A warty brown hand came into focus first, then a massive toad-like head, cracked with scars and thick leathery flesh. Two tiny marble eyes of liquid black glared at her evilly. Arms fat with muscles crossed the centerline of a barrel-chest criss-crossed with more scars and some gladiator kill markings

Tali stared at him and stepped forward calmly. Inside her mind was racing. A Houk. The Overseer had assigned her to a damned Houk. That _schutta_. She casually unclipped her saber-foil and slipped it into the rack like she didn't have the slightest worry and stepped away.

She reached for one of the lockers and the Houk made a low snarl.

"That one Slek's."

Tali moved her hand over to the next one. "Then this one's _mine_." The liquid black jellies wicked under eyelids. Watching. Calculating. She looked him in the eye and didn't blink.

Finally he made a dismissive grunt. He'd seen her in the mess hall earlier. Seen how she sent those Twi'leks packing. Like all good predators, he wasn't in the mood for prey that could bite back. All he said was "Turn off light or Slek crush," then the Houk squeezed back into the bottom bunk like the galaxy's most malicious jack-in-the-box.

Tali took off her boots and turned off the light. She waited a second as her eyes adjusted, but this darkness was nothing compared to the solid blackness of the spice mines. The Sith Pureblood silently climbed the ladder and lay down fully clothed on top of the covers.

She listened to the grumbles of the Houk's breath below her, waited for them to slip into the deeper rumbles of true sleep. Then Tali slipped her right fist out of her sleeve. She fell asleep the same way she had for over fourteen years. With both ears cocked and a knife under the pillow.


End file.
